Kalshi raises $185M, valued at $2B. Big win for regulated event-based trading in the US.
What Happened
Kalshi, a US-regulated prediction market, closed a $185M funding round led by Paradigm, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Multicoin Capital, and others. The Wall Street Journal reported the raise yesterday.
CEO Tarek Mansour said the company will use the money to scale the tech team and push integrations with major brokerages. Kalshi contracts are already live on Robinhood and Webull.
Founded in 2018 by Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, Kalshi had previously raised $156M. This latest round brings the valuation to $2B, a big vote of confidence in the regulated prediction market space.
Market and Regulatory Insight
Kalshi’s raise follows a big regulatory win. In May 2025, the CFTC dropped its appeal against a court ruling that allowed Kalshi to offer political event contracts.
The CFTC had argued these contracts violated federal anti-gambling laws. The dismissal now clears the way for broader use of regulated political prediction markets in the US.
Kalshi is regulated; Polymarket is not. Polymarket is closing a $200M round at a $1B valuation but is offshore.
Kalshi’s platform allows users to trade contracts based on binary outcomes tied to events in crypto, macro, weather, and sports. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, 79% of March and April trading volume was sports-related.
But Kalshi has run into trouble at the state level over those same sports contracts, so there’s still tension between federal approval and state oversight.
Quotes
Tarek Mansour, Kalshi CEO, said the new funding will help “scale Kalshi’s tech team and get prediction markets into more brokerages.”
Investor Angle Kalshi’s funding and regulatory clarity could bring event-driven derivatives to the mainstream in traditional brokerage apps. With US approval and Webull and Robinhood partnerships, Kalshi is going to dominate regulated prediction trading.
The market is similar to options trading; users are speculating on real-world outcomes, not just price action. For crypto traders, this is a regulated entry point into on-chain-like prediction markets.
With the 2024 US election cycle heating up, Kalshi and Polymarket will compete for retail and institutional flow. Regulatory clarity will also attract DeFi builders and crypto-native traders looking for bridges between prediction markets and tokenized finance.
Conclusion
Kalshi’s $185M raise is a vote of confidence in regulated prediction markets. With the CFTC backing off and the 2024 US elections looming, the real test is just beginning:
Can Kalshi scale fast enough to lead the next wave of event-based finance?